British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
